Why we want to live in Oslo, Helsinki, or Copenhagen

That Scandinavia is really not a punishment to live in, I have been aware of that for a while. Norway is currently in first place for happiness in life. It's not very strange, considering that studying there is for example free. Healthcare is free until the age of 16 and for pregnant women, and after that, it's also not expensive: everyone is insured with the national health insurance, so there is no competition. Oh yes, and then there's also the paternity leave that was extended not long ago. Parents now get a total of 49 weeks off (14 weeks per person). Ehhh, where was I? Sorry, I was just busy fantasizing about moving to Oslo.

But you don't necessarily have to go to Norway: all of Scandinavia has it pretty well sorted. A study has shown that Oslo, Helsinki, and Copenhagen are the three cities with the best work-life balance. For your information: we came in twelfth place. Not bad, but not necessarily good either. The dubious honor of the last three cities went to Seoul, Milan, and Budapest. New York made the biggest drop: from number 21 to number 40. Thanks to ‘Rona, of course.

Now I can totally imagine why Copenhagen is on this list and why so high: Denmark has a 34-hour workweek and my god, how nice would that be? They find it very important there that you don't live to work, but the other way around. Okay, the plan has changed. Not moving to Norway but to Denmark.

Because besides the fact that the work-life balance there seems to be the best, the number of burnouts is also incredibly low. It makes sense that this is related, but in Budapest, that's not the case. It scores very low on work happiness and balance, but also very low on work pressure and burnout. So people are indeed working a lot there, but feel no stress at all? Oslo and Helsinki complete the top 3 in this regard, in terms of the least number of cases of overwork.

Anyway, we can learn a lot from Scandinavia. Their approach to the coronavirus may not have been appreciated everywhere, but everything remained open there and the economy kept running. That's not exactly the case here, to put it mildly. I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going to check how much a one-way ticket to Denmark costs. Just need to get the language down and then I'm good to go.